Elevator Pitches: The Hashtag Method

Elevator pitches are a crucial part of writing because they communicate what our story is about in a sentence or two.

If you’re working on a full-length novel and someone asks what your book is about, it can be hard to know where to start.

With your elevator pitch ready to go, you can answer simply and efficiently.

Two days ago, an acquaintance read my first story on vocal. That night he had a nightmare so vivid he waited to tell me until he saw me yesterday.

Essentially, he was the protagonist. His dream was so scary I had to balance feeling bad for him with my excitement that my 2,000 word short story could inspire a nightmare that bad.

Ironically, the main points of his dream were the main points of my elevator pitch. After spending hours crafting my pitch, it was encouraging to hear his dream.

Before we get any further...

Let me warn you I didn’t really understand elevator pitches (EPs) until after I’d finished writing my work-in-progress (WIP).

Most of the time I wrote my book, I had the wrong idea of what an EP actually is.

That said, now I have the right understanding and my method for creating EPs has helped other writers. If you need some tips for yours, I share what I’ve learned below.

Apply what’s helpful, and leave the rest!

.......

I moderate an online writers group and much of what I do is edit first pages and elevator pitches. Awhile back I was helping a writer with their pitch and explained the method I created to help me.

For ease of explaining, I’ll use J. K. Rowling’s pitch for Harry Potter.

Her elevator pitch was quite simple. I doubt she knew it’d become a worldwide literature phenomenon:

Orphan boy goes to school for wizards.

While Harry Potter was turned down by several publishing houses (and maybe you have been too), despite early rejections, the premise of the book went on to influence readers across the globe, inspire millions, and bring in billions.

But it all started with seven words.

Out of an entire book, how do you choose which seven or so to use?

We’ll cover that next, but before we jump in I’ll give you a heads up on what we’ll cover in this post:

• How to cut your 80-100k word novel into just a phrase or two

• Let you in on the secret I used to craft my pitch

• Explain how those few words can make or break you as a writer

If you’re brainstorming your book, halfway through the writing, or simply nervous about starting your first sentence, an elevator pitch can take you from blank sheet to book deal, all in a short conversation.

How to use social media to craft your pitch.

Several years ago I was ready to attend a writing conference, except for one aspect: I needed to edit my pitch.

Thankfully, I’m on social media quite a bit and consequently use hashtags (or for those who grew up with “home phones” I’m talking about the pound symbol).

Quick social media lesson: When posting a photo, people typically use hashtags to alert users who post similar content. If I post a photo of myself in a coffee shop wearing black and white (because what else would I honestly be wearing) I might hashtag #cafe #bandw #coffee, etc.

Same goes for elevator pitches. It’s important to pick out your key words.

(If you know anything about SEO, choose the words that would give you a higher ranking on Google.)

J.K. Rowling did this magnificently: Orphan boy goes to school for wizards.

In just seven words we know:

• The main character is a boy with some kind of difficult past (orphan). This already makes him empathetic if not directly relatable to some readers.

• Her target audience — young readers, or to be technical, YA. How do we know this? He’s going to school.

• The genre is likely science-fiction/fantasy. Because where else do you go to wizarding school?

If Twitter had been around in 1997, Rowling probably would’ve hashtagged #wizard #orphan #school. Oh, and for good measure, #debutauthor, but that’s beside the point!

When deciding on your elevator pitch, choose the words you’d use as hashtags when posting about your book. This will help you see the core of what you’re trying to get across.

This is what I explained to that writer in the writers group I moderate.

What are the key words that set your story idea apart? What are the hashtags you would use?

If Harry wasn’t an orphan the Dursleys probably wouldn’t have needed to be included.

If Hogwarts wasn’t a wizarding school, well, there goes most of the series.

If Harry wasn’t a young child there goes the generation of readers who grew up as Harry did.

Ask yourself what sets your story apart.

• Is it the age of your protagonist?

• The setting of your story?

• A detail that changes the trajectory of your plot?

A great story often involves either a 1) normal protagonist in an 2) abnormal setting or a 1b) abnormal protagonist in a 2b) normal setting.

Harry is normal in the sense of he is a young boy going to school.

Hogwarts is abnormal in the sense of it’s a wizarding school.

I don’t know about you, but reading about a wizard going to wizarding school doesn’t sound as exciting as reading about an orphan boy who has never experienced magic going to wizarding school.

What makes your story unique?

How To Turn A Book Into Sentence.

The Martian was written by Andy Weir and went on to become a movie starring Matt Damon. Essentially, it’s about a guy in space who finds himself in the desolation of Mars, stranded. He singlehandedly has to learn how to survive on a planet that doesn’t even have water. Through the process of survival, he learns a lot about himself and goes through an entire character arc.

You might imagine the pitch for this movie as some scientific, long-winded sentence. The pitch I found is actually just eleven words:

Astronaut, stranded on Mars, has to figure out how to survive.

Not so bad.

The key is to pick out the few, most important aspects of your storyline. For instance, the pitch could’ve been:

Man has to figure out how to survive a foreign climate.

But that leaves out the entire location of the story, a location that almost becomes a secondary villain. Not good.

Mars is eye catching.

Stranded makes me empathize with a character I don’t even know.

Survive implies the main character is active, not passively waiting around for help.

Overall, it draws you in and makes you want to find out more. That’s the point!

How Your Pitch Can Make Or Break Your Publishing Options

Once while perusing a marketing consult’s website, I came across a blog on hooks, or elevator pitches. In the post the writer, Rob Eager, talked about the importance of getting a reader’s attention in 30 words or less.

That’s not many, but if Rowling did it in 7 I bet you can do it in 30.

Once I edited my elevator pitch, I went to my conference meetings, armed and ready. While having lunch with an acquisitions editor we talked about my book. She thought the premise sounded so interesting she asked me to submit to her. (The book was half written.)

My 23 words were a huge part in landing me an opportunity to pitch to a publisher who would have been off limits because at the time, I didn’t have an agent.

Later on I was touring a publishing house in Nashville (I actually snuck in but the point is I got in), and the marketing director asked me what my books were about. I quickly gave her my pitches.

If I’d stumbled around, trying to piece the roughly 155k thousand words of my two books into a concise explanation, she would’ve assumed I didn’t understand my own writing.

That’s not a good light to put myself in when I’m at a publishing house.

And that’s just one example of when pitches come in handy.

They’re vital at writing conferences. Helpful when standing in line waiting for the barista to ring up your coffee. And pretty necessary when friends ask.

But more than this, crafting the perfect elevator pitch helps you, the writer, understand what you’re writing.

If I hadn’t taken the time to create my elevator pitch I wouldn’t understand the core of my story as well as I do today. The theme would likely be a little flimsy, and the writing subpar.

A good pitch can bring about opportunities you never would get otherwise.

Back to You

Now what about you and your specific idea? If you still feel stuck, one more practice that may help is working off your synopsis, if you have one.

A synopsis is often 1-3 pages and summarizes your book. Now, creating a synopsis can be difficult, because you have to tell everything important happens over the course of your book in just those 1-3 pages.

However, your EP isn’t supposed to tell everything that happens.

If you’re a writer who types, try opening a blank document and pasting your synopsis in. Then either delete (make sure you have a copy saved) or use the Strikethrough option to get rid of every word, phrase, or sentence that isn’t absolutely essential to your pitch.

Going back to the Harry Potter example, Ron and Hermione are a huge part of Harry’s world, but they aren’t essential to the pitch.

The pitch for Twilight consisted of: A teen romance between an ordinary girl and a boy who is actually a vampire.

Jacob isn’t even mentioned, and he’s a large part of the entire story.

Include what’s crucial, cut the rest.

Now that you know my hashtag method, how to cut your synopsis into a pitch, and have some examples to work from, it’s time to get back to work.

Once you have a working pitch, feel free to tweet me. I’d love to see what you come up with.

Until then, happy writing!